By Nightfall

by Michael Cunningham (Farrar, Straus & Giroux; $25)

Cunningham’s latest novel seems almost like a dare: can Auguste Rodin, Daisy Buchanan, Damien Hirst, Gustav von Aschenbach, and the rock band Styx all fit in a slim novel that spans only five days and unfolds almost entirely in Manhattan? As it turns out, absolutely. Peter, a downtown art dealer, and his wife, Rebecca, are gamely negotiating middle age with enviable jobs, a Mercer Street loft, and a sullen daughter who has dropped out of Tufts. When Rebecca’s younger brother arrives for a visit, Peter is both exasperated and smug. Who better to put midlife dissatisfactions into perspective than a precocious yet aimless ex-addict? Instead, the young man’s doomed beauty threatens to destroy all Peter’s carefully rehearsed compromises. The novel is less a snapshot of the way we live now than a consideration of the timeless consolations of love and art in the shadow of death, and its resolution—inevitable yet startling, like the slap of a wave—is a triumph. ♦

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